Paris:

A man shot and seriously wounded two officers in a Paris police station on Thursday after grabbing a weapon, a source close to the case told AFP.

The officers had just arrested the man and were searching him when he seized one of their weapons and opened fire, according to a police source.

The source close to the case said the incident happened in the French capital’s 13th district shortly before 10:30 pm (2030 GMT), adding that the officers were in critical care.

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French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping review the troops, on May 7, 2024 at the Tarbes airport, southwestern France.
| Photo Credit: AP

France’s President is hosting China’s Leader at a remote mountain pass in the Pyrenees on May 7 for private meetings after a high-stakes state visit in Paris dominated by trade disputes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Tourmalet Pass near the Spanish border, where Mr. Macron spent time as a child visiting his grandmother. It is meant to be a reciprocal gesture after Mr. Jinping took Mr. Macron last year to the residence of the governor of Guangdong province, where the Chinese president’s father once lived.

Snow coated nearby slopes after new snowfall overnight, and security was tightened around the area. The winding roads up to the pass were blocked by authorities on May 7 for dozens of kilometers (miles).

The mountain meetings come after a grandiose state visit by Mr. Jinping on May 6 that included a ceremonial welcome at the monument housing Napoleon’s tomb and a state dinner at the Elysee Palace with celebrities and magnates.

Mr. Jinping is on a trip to Europe aimed at reinvigorating relations at a time of global tensions. He heads next to Serbia and Hungary.

Paris:

The blades of the Moulin Rouge windmill, one of the most famous landmarks in Paris, collapsed during the night, firefighters said on Thursday, just months before the French capital hosts the Olympics.

There was no risk of further collapse, Paris firefighters said. The reason for the accident was not yet known.

“Fortunately this happened after closing,” a Moulin Rouge official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“Every week, the cabaret’s technical teams check the windmill mechanism and did not note any problems,” the source said, adding that there was no more information on the reason for the collapse.

“It’s the first time that an accident like this has happened since” the cabaret first opened its doors on October 6, 1889, the source said.

Images on social media showed the blade unit lying on the street below, with some of the blades slightly bent from the apparent fall.

The Moulin Rouge cabaret, with its distinctive red windmill blades, is located in northern Paris and is one of the most visited landmarks in the city.

Known as the birthplace of the modern dance form the can-can, it opened its doors in October 1889 at the foot of the Montmartre hill.

It quickly became a hit and a stop to look at its facade or catch a show inside is a must-do on most tourists’ lists of things to do in the French capital.

The accident will add to concerns of whether Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world, is ready to host the thousands more that will descent during July-August for the Olympic Games.

The only serious accident the landmark has endured was a fire that erupted during works in 1915, which forced the venue to close for nine years.

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Paris:

The trial opens in France on Monday of a guitar teacher accused of flying in a gang of Georgian hitmen to murder his physiotherapist. The musician has accused the Parisian practitioner of causing him debilitating pain in the neck but has denied ever trying to kill him.

The physiotherapist was crossing the road to go to work in 2019, when a car accelerated and knocked him over before speeding off.

He survived with a bruise on his foot and trauma to his leg and told investigators he suspected the involvement of a former patient who held a grudge against him.

The order of physiotherapists had ordered him to pay his ex-client 30,000 euros (almost $32,000) in damages.

But through telephone tapping investigators discovered the client was allegedly still bent on revenge.

They found that the man’s partner and her father, both Georgian, had allegedly helped recruit hitmen from the Caucasus country to take out the physiotherapist.

In 2018, the music teacher paid a first gang 2,000 euros ($2,130) but it never completed its mission.

His girlfriend then is alleged to have found a new team, including three men who flew over from Georgia to try to run over their target, then left the country.

The guitar teacher was allegedly planning to burglarise the therapist’s home when police arrested him.

French authorities ordered 10 people to stand trial in the case, but three are in Georgia and one died in detention in February.

The guitar teacher, as well as four other men and a woman, are to appear in court in the case to run until May 10.

Most of them have been charged with plotting to carry out a murder in a gang, while one of them — a friend — has been accused of not reporting a crime.

Contacted by AFP, the guitar teacher’s defence team refused to comment.
 

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France’s capital Paris is battling an invasion of bedbugs, just 10 months before the 2024 Summer Olympics. The tiny pests were first spotted in hotels and rental apartments across the city during the summer. Then, moviegoers were disgusted by these bugs in theatres and now, social media users have reported bedbugs crawling around on seats in high-speed trains and Paris Metro. Photos and videos of bedbugs in the Metro train are going viral on X (formerly) with passengers warning others to pay attention before sitting on a seat or dropping their bags.

Dans les bus @RATPgroup aussi il y a des punaises pic.twitter.com/DbnmgMwEQY

— Ssiguss (@Ssiguss) September 27, 2023

France24 said in a report that country’s transport minister Clement Beaune has vowed to “protect” the public from the menace by holding a meeting of public transport operators.

Bedbugs had disappeared from daily life in France in 1950s, but their resurgence is mostly due to high population density and more mass transit.

Paris city hall has urged President Emmanuel Macron to take measures to check the infestation, including creating a dedicated task force, said the outlet.

But despite these voices, Paris’ deputy mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said that there is “no threat to the Olympic Games”, and urged everyone to work together to solve the issue. “Bedbugs existed before and they will exist afterward,” he added.

Transport operators have said they will remain “extremely vigilant” and The Local France said there have been no more recent sightings since the one caught on camera by a passenger last week.

Companies specialising in clearing insect infestation say they have been overwhelmed in recent weeks. One visit costs several hundreds of dollars and the pest control operation often needs to be repeated.

These blood-sucking pests have been given the name bedbugs because they have a habit of nesting in mattresses. They come out at night to feed on human blood.

Paris:

Paris will on Friday become the first European capital to ban floating electric scooters from its streets, leaving fans desolate but relieving those who loathed their “nuisance” factor.

Residents voted by almost 90 percent in an April referendum to ban the scooters — celebrated as a win for direct democracy by mayor Anne Hidalgo even though turnout was just 7.5 percent.

The ban applies to rental scooters which have been offered by several operators since 2018, although people will still be able to whizz through Paris on privately-owned contraptions.

With complaints of users jostling through pedestrians on pavements or dumping their rides awkwardly at intersections, the city’s 15,000 two-wheeled machines from providers Tier, Lime and Dott had turned into “nuisances” for many Parisians, Hidalgo said at the time.

But “so many people were sad” at the decision, said Paris-based American influencer Amanda Rollins, 33, who often gets around by scooter — one of 400,000 people to do so in 2022, according to figures from the operators.

“They’re just so much fun!” she added, while noting that being able to just pick one up offers “a really reliable way to get home… like a safety net” on nights when the metro closes before the capital’s bars.

The day scooters arrived in Paris in 2018 was “like Christmas… it was like Santa came overnight,” she recalled, praising their use for tours of the city with friends and their practicality when stopping for a swift Instagram photoshoot.

-‘Turn of the page’ –

Paris “is a unique case” said Clement Pette, head of Tier’s operations in France. “It’s a major turn of the page”.

By Friday, the Berlin-based firm had collected 3,000 of its 5,000 scooters, with growing red areas on its application’s map showing parking forbidden in more and more of Paris each night as it loaded them into vans.

Only a small zone in central Paris will have scooters available until the wheels finally come off.

Like other operators, Tier’s freshly-serviced machines will be heading to other cities where it offers scooter service.

Some tier machines will remain in Paris’ outskirts, with most returning to Germany or Warsaw, while Lime ships them to Lille, London, Copenhagen and German cities and Dott is set to send some as far away as Tel Aviv.

“We’ve turned the page on scooters” for the whole Paris region, said Xavier Mirailles, Lime’s public affairs director.

Instead, like the other operators, Lime is betting on its fleet of 10,000 floating-hire bicycles, against around 5,000 offered by Tier.

– Mixed impact –

Removing floating scooters from Paris won’t mean that they disappear from the capital’s streets altogether, as many people have made the jump to owning their own — or more exotic rides like electric monowheels.

“Shared electric scooters can be a gateway to acquiring a personal scooter,” said Anne De Bortoli, a researcher at Montreal-based sustainability lab CIRAIG.

She highlighted that the scooters had begun to make an impact on emissions from Parisian transport in recent years, with second-generation models producing carbon emissions of around 60 grammes of CO2 per kilometre.

That was “more than a personal bike, the metro or suburban trains” — the modes of transport most often replaced by scooter trips — “but it also replaced some taxi rides and trips in personal cars”, making for “slight gains in terms of carbon footprint”.

“We have to change the way we get around as quickly as possible… scooters allowed people to access this mode of transport, to test it out, see if it met their needs. It often made people want to switch,” Anne De Bortoli said.

While the vehicles may have offered an environmental impact, they also took a toll on users, with 10 riders killed in France in July alone according to government data — the country’s heaviest-ever toll.

Announcing the figures earlier this month, road safety chief Florence Guillaume “strongly encouraged” scooter users to wear helmets, which have been made obligatory in some cities like Italy and Danish capital Copenhagen.

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